Students are to post reactions (minimum 250 words) to the assigned reading/listening linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions.
Click HERE to read "The Ongoing Problem of Race in YA."
Click HERE to read Daniel Jose Older's Buzzfeed essay: "Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing." Click HERE to listen to an excerpt from Older's acclaimed YA novel, Shadowshaper.
Click HERE to read an excerpt from Tomi Adeyemi's acclaimed YA novel, Children of Blood and Bone. Read at least the first five pages of Chapter One (which starts on pg 11).
Click HERE to visit Rich in Color, a site dedicated to YA Books starring or written by BIPOC.
Click HERE TO review a list of "The 50 Best Multicultural Young Adult Books of 2020."
10 comments:
When it comes to the question of diversity in fictional media, I think certain factors such as region, language, and culture come into play. In my opinion, part of the reason why there is such a high demand for diversity in America’s books is due to the country’s large immigrant population with their families and generations, with various peoples of different kinds all actively mingling within society. In some other Eastern countries’ writing environments that I’ve experienced, there is a similar pattern of a lack of diversity, but practically no pushback from the readers.
I am fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese, so I have also read many stories written in Chinese and consume media that originate from either the East or West on a regular basis. In certain East Asian countries like China, Taiwan, and Japan, Western media is also quite popular there, but personally, I don’t quite hear many complaints from the citizens there about a lack of representation when it comes to the Western media that they consume.
Taking WEBTOON, a popular Eastern webcomics website in the U.S. for example, its main audience demographic is in South Korea. The stories that I’ve read written by Korean authors never feature protagonists without some sort of Asian heritage, culture, or background, and practically always the main cast of characters are Korean rather than Chinese, Japanese, etc. I also cannot recall from the top of my head any Chinese novel or story I have currently read that features a protagonist that isn’t Asian, although I know of some Japanese manga and anime that do feature non-Asian protagonists.
Some of the most important things when it comes to writing a story is knowing what you want to inspire, and knowing how to portray those inspirations in the best ways. If a piece of work is created simply for the sake of diversification, the core of that message is mere pandering, and is disrespectful to both the readers for having wasted their time and to those that the work sought to represent by giving the impression that they are just being catered to lazily. In my opinion, the representation of diversity should come from those diverse members, as they themselves understand their own complexities and how they intend to show them to the world, with the support of those already with a solid foundation in the current world of media and literary production.
Personally, my own writing prefers not to focus on individuals like the people themselves and their self-exploration of discovering who they are or the nuanced intricacies of relationships, such as coming-of-age or romance stories. My tastes mainly involve the process of discovering more about the world out there and the idea of finding new concepts and things that people could only imagine, that are either rare or impossible to experience or comprehend.
By Afton,
As someone who comes from a variety of cultures, as a Japanese, Brazillian, and Irish man, it's always nice to see a variety of representation within all forms of media, especially in books. It's always nice to have diversity in media.
As someone who has read a lot of books, ranging from Stephen King's hits to Neil Gaiman's wonderful creations, each book felt different. I didn't really grow up reading many books that were written from outside the US though. While this wasn't purposeful it was something I did notice over time and it made me want to explore more of what the world had to offer. Sure American authors have written some of the best books I've read, but there are catalogs and catalogs of pieces of work that I haven't even discovered yet.
I think it's important to have different representations within our books in the US, as most books tend to leave the character a blank slate, letting you imagine what they look like, many books still describe their characters but unfortunately, there are many books where you have to fill in the blanks leaving you with a certain headcanon. Having characters being represented from different backgrounds, cultures, sexualities, and more helps define a character. The protagonist is one of the if not most important characters in a book, you want your reader to feel connected to them, so giving them a background and giving them some form of representation even if it is aimed at a certain audience, that audience will feel even more connected as they feel like they've been represented within the story.
I believe stories can and should allow the readers to find something relatable within the characters, something they can understand. I believe that a story should be made from the heart and should let the characters be represented naturally rather than giving into the typical stereotypes of representation in stories and making it feel forced. It's important that there is a book out there for everyone to enjoy, for a specific audience along with a total audience, because even if you aren't the target audience you could always experience something new and learn more about something you didn't know before.
I read the except from Children of Blood and Bone, though I'm not entirely sure how far I was supposed to read as it doesn't look like page numbers are attached. Despite that I thought it was really good. I've read some other books that take racial commentary and translate it into an alternative setting so it can more easily be digested by a younger audience. I read Dread Nation by Justina Ireland, as well as the stories An Unkindness of Ghosts and The Deep by Rivers Solomon.
There are a lot of important connections I can see from Children of Bone even right out the gate. In the way the main character refuses to bow to someone with lighter skin, describing how the lighter skin came from less time being forced to spend outside. The main character, Zélie, also refuses to bow to someone with lighter skin.
Representation is extremely important in all kinds of fiction. If a young gay girl reads books where no one is a young gay girl, they might start to believe that they either don't exist or they shouldn't. The same could be said for any other discriminated population. I also think that there is a certain level of importance for minorities to also write stories about minorities. It's authentic and the only way to get an accurate sketch of truth. I'm not saying that only minorities should write characters that are minorities. It merely presents a certain level of genuine attitude toward people that might find kinship with your words.
LUNA
Honestly, diversity has not ever been much of a topic in which I have ever paid much attention to. I have always seen it as a secondary trait for characters in stories which do not explicitly focus on the topic. However, that viewpoint is, to say the least, a privileged one said by a person who never needed to see that diversity: I was effectively always present in the stories as a cis, heterosexual man, with my Asian American identity usually being considered close enough to white to allow myself to identify with white characters (even if that whole ideology is a can of worms in-of-itself, with the issue of “model minority” coming to mind).
Even if it may be understated, and perhaps not exactly competing for attention the same way short-form content (such as TikTok or YouTube Shorts) has been taking it, written stories are still very powerful as one of the first pieces of entertainment exposed to children, along with being one of the ways in which children can hear about stories they themselves may not be able to experience, or gives them a window into a world they have yet to explore. Now that I’m a little more mature and a little more aware of exactly why the power of representation is so powerful, I can certainly see the issues in how many novels, not just YA, tend to default to “white.” Out of the books I’ve read, I can likely count with my hands the number which have notably have had important characters who were people of color or people who may have covered more or different parts of the gender and sexuality spectrum (in fact, only one book I’ve read has actually had a trans character who was relevant to the story).
Admittedly, that’s likely a result of the book choices I make, but still, I would want to be able to pick any book off the bookshelf, and for its protagonist to be of a different demographic than the protagonist of the previous book I glanced at. Children of Blood and Bone, even if the novel may not be the single greatest piece of literature ever made, is still a good story to be read, and one that absolutely deserves a spotlight for being a fantasy novel that for once, doesn’t take in an European-inspired fantasy world and makes room for mythological inspirations from a cultural typically foreign from the fantasy space.
I do think that children's books--MG and below in particular--are getting more diverse than the first two articles described. I think our generation got to grow up just as diversity was starting to take off a little more. Rick Riordan modeled this shift in a way that kind of mirrors the rest of the industry: he started out with few to no mentions of race in the first couple Percy Jackson books, then as the series continued and he branched out to Heroes of Olympus and Kane Chronicles his casts characters became very diverse, then in the later books he also branched out to showing more queer characters and relationships.
I really enjoyed the excerpt from Children of Blood and Bone. It did a great job of quickly introducing complex characters/relationships and a world of oppression and lost magic. Plus, the staff fighting was awesome. I felt like the author had a good understanding of how these sorts of fights can go, or maybe is even a martial artist herself.
Sometimes I think that many writers (including myself at times) are hesitant to write from or about the perspective of a character whose culture or lived experience they are not a part of. For me, this is more out of fear of getting it wrong than anything else, or fear of being presumptuous. But I think you come to a point where you just have to do it, and talk to people, and do a lot of googling, and do a lot of empathy, and then keep doing it. Not every story needs critical commentary on racial biases/cultural norms/etc., but being able to read about lots of different faces and perspectives is definitely important. Ten year old me (and twenty year old me!) certainly would have been super hyped if I'd found a popular MG/YA book with a Filipino in it.
I recently read "Sonny's Blues" by James baldwin. I loved it, in fact I love James Baldwin's pieces, writing style, eloquence and insightful personality as a whole. That being said, there is this long running phenomena that authors and artists of color (black artists in particular) can't write YA stories without any blatant or underlying themes of racial struggle. I enjoy books like "If you Come Softly", "The Bluest Eye", "Bud not Buddy" and "The Color Purple" (and so many others) but I don't want depression, struggle and racial bias to be the entirety of my identity as a person of color. I definitely don't' want to feel like I have to make the struggle of those before me the bulk of my identity by other's pushing this agenda that ALL racially-diverse stories and poc-written stories have to be oriented around death, inequity and a hateful world (I'm living in it, I'm reading YA novels to escape from it). I understand people need to be educated on the atrocities others face for invalid reasons, but if I want to read a murder-mystery or fantastical novel with representation, I shouldn't have to settle for a lynch-heavy book that will leave me in more of a somber mood than I was in before I started reading. This agenda can also be discouraging to writers who have to do the same research, on the same injustices and possibly spiral into their own deep depression while writing their book and feel a sullen helplessness at having to alter their original plot (and the mood it may bring). Jen Doll brings up a lot of complex emotions for me in her article "The Ongoing Problem of Race in Y.A." because, while I read various race-oriented YA novels for various reasons, people in this world have a hard time seeing race in YA novels as normal component of a story.
The whole creation of a book geared toward the YA audience is to provide new avenues of imagination. A book is a model for many people to see how people interact, how people think, and how people behave in situations. Now, people align themselves with people that are similar to them. That is the prime reason why diversity is important. Moreover, diversity in books gives exposure to children who may not be surrounded by it in school or wherever they live. There also lies a hidden dynamic of power within the usage of race. Having more diversity within writing helps "humanize" those cultures and traditions in a society where those minority populations may be overlooked.
Personally, I have also read Baldwin's "Sonny Blues" and the whole idea of how the blues became an expression of empowerment. The potential for brotherhood is also a theme within that story, and this all combines with race because each theme expands the avenue and dreams for the race that it empowers. One quote that stood out to me in the readings was when Daniel Older said: "this is the language of privilege." This is something I had not thought about. The power of language to limit the creativity and potential of authors of color to spread their work is an issue that I really see. Another issue that limits diversity in writing is the rigid set of rules and standards that publishing companies have. Overall, the importance of diversity in writing is something that should definitely be highlighted more often.
I, while growing up, never noticed the racial divide in YA literature despite it being present. Books like Maze Runner and Hunger Games have characters of other races on display, although their racial/ethnic backgrounds are not central parts of their characters. I was raised in an environment that was not overwhelmingly white, but was culturally homogenous, and I think that books including BIPOC characters but not representing their cultures are the new norm. This may not be intentionally exclusionary or racist, because authors with similar backgrounds to myself would not know that their stories are so white-focused and perpetuate this somewhat exclusionary atmosphere while being unaware.
What was very special about Children of Blood and Bone is that it wasn't just a BIPOC character, it was rooted in the culture of the people it represents. This is something that I expect to change in the coming years as our culture values diversity more and more, and new ideas will infuse new life into creative fields that are being decried as creatively bankrupt.
I found it interesting in the article Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing how the author called out the scapegoat of “The Market” that some editors/publishers use to avoid responsibility for the problem of lack of representation in MG/YA novels. It’s not as if I don’t understand where these people may be coming from– how can an individual change what seems like the way of the world– but that’s just the problem. No one person can save the world of course but it is important for each person to recognize their own power and responsibility, especially in positions of authority, and be proactive.
Children of Blood and Bone has sat on my brother’s bookshelf for so many years now, and I’ve always thought the cover was cool, so I was happy to get a taste of it with the first chapter for this blog post. I loved the rich cultural world represented, one I need to read the full book in order to understand wholly. The integration of different languages into books is one of my favorite book features because I think it adds so much.
Reading “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature” by Christopher Myres was an eye opening experience that seemed to foreshadow the future. The article discussed the terrible reality children of color face, one where they are not represented in books, but if they are they are misrepresented. As Myres mentioned, children use books to explore the world around them and envision the possibilities of what they can achieve in life. But when books lack to include children of color they have a harder time envisioning themselves in places that are not apparent to them. Hearing that books were not published simply because they had covers with children of color on them, because “they wouldn’t sell” is just so heartbreaking. I hope and think that we are far from that reality now as people are much more accepting than they were in the past. Lastly, I really enjoyed the way the author finished this article. Explaining how they will write the stories that these children need. The ones that will help them explore the world. The ones that will help them imagine so many realities for themselves. The ones that will encourage them to do what they enjoy most, and not just follow the dreams set on to them by society and the expectations of the external world. But that is only the first step for change, the next step for this reality is to build that same imagination and belief in the minds of the teachers, parents, librarians, publishers, and all of us who need to continue with an open mind and never eliminate anyone’s aspirations before they even try.
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